More than most plays, "The Architect" would seem to lend itself to big-screen treatment. A major plot point involves a high-rise public housing project that one character campaigns to have demolished because of its dehumanizing effect on residents. In a movie, unlike on the stage, the project can be shown in all its deplorable conditions.

But despite graphic scenes of drug- and crime-infested buildings where people are forced to live behind bars like prisoners, "The Architect" still feels stagebound, inert when it needs to be cinematic. The dialogue lacks the naturalistic ring expected in movies. Characters often sound like they're making speeches instead of just gabbing.

Director Matt Tauber adapted David Greig's play, changing the setting from Glasgow to Chicago (the housing project invokes the city's notorious Cabrini-Green, which has been partially torn down) while leaving intact Greig's hard-to-disagree-with humanistic message that everybody deserves a decent place to live. Tauber's long experience directing for the stage is evident, as is, unfortunately, his inexperience as a filmmaker. "The Architect" is his debut feature, and he moves his actors around as if still working in a limited space.

But Tauber's work in the theater obviously taught him how to coax nuanced performances from his cast. The movie is worth seeing just to watch Anthony LaPaglia as Leo -- the architect who designed the project at the start of his now-flourishing career -- interact with Viola Davis as the activist Tonya. She hunts Leo down and entreats him to sign her petition to demolish his own buildings, believing his signature could accomplish the deed. LaPaglia, known mostly for "Without a Trace" although he's a veteran of stage and film, and Davis, seen in supporting roles in "Traffic" and "Far From Heaven," create tension in their first scene together as each tries to assess the other.

"The Architect" will get you thinking about the extremes of urban life and the responsibilities of architects and planners to close the gap between the rich and poor. Far less thought provoking is Leo's relationship with his emotionally challenged family, which borders on cliche. His wife (Isabella Rossellini) is an obsessive who alternates between staring at neat arrangements of lemons and breaking ceramic pots in the garden in the middle of the night. His daughter (Hayden Panettiere, the cheerleader with weird powers of regeneration on "Heroes"), is finding herself, and his son is determining his sexuality. They're all so opaque that it's hard to care what becomes of them. Their suburban life is intended to be a bright contrast to the mean streets of Chicago, but neither is very appealing.

"The Architect" is the latest film to de-glamorize that profession. Movies used to make heroes of architects, but they have fallen from the pinnacle of "The Fountainhead." Now they are depicted as ordinary beings with the same professional and personal problems as everyone else.

Sixty-one years after Adolf Hitler blew his brains out, anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe and the Middle East, according to "Ever Again," a persuasive and disturbing new documentary. The picture describes the growing incidence of hate crimes against Jews while uncovering the institutional structures propagating that hate, from radical Islam to the neo-Nazi movement.

By far the most dangerous of recent trends is the growing pervasiveness of Muslim fundamentalism, which both inculcates fanaticism and terrorizes moderates into silence. Operating out of mosques in major European cities such as Paris, London and Antwerp, Belgium, radical clerics educate teenage boys with a steady onslaught of misinformation and hatred toward the West. In Belgium, a religious leader calls the 9/11 attacks "an act of poetry, an abstraction." Osama Bin Laden is praised as a hero. At an annual conference in England, held every Sept. 11, the 9/11 suicide bombers are called "the Magnificent 19."

This is exacerbated by the Muslim cable stations, beamed across Europe and streaming online, which feature interviews with angelic-looking children anticipating the glories of "martyrdom" and commentary by fantasists saying that the Holocaust was the result of a conspiracy between "Hitler and the rich Jews" (for the purpose of killing "poor Jews").

On the reasonable side of the ledger, a British government official points out that "there's no doubt about the connection between the hate preached (in the mosques) and manifestations of hate actions." The connection between hate speech and hate action is what prompts Tony Blair, in the aftermath of the London Underground bombing, to announce that the government would be deporting non-citizens who "meddle in extremism." The movie shows how the extreme language of anti-Semitism is back. While the Nazis referred to Jews as disease-spreading vermin, the new anti-Semites compare Jews to the AIDS virus.

"Ever Again" also documents the resurgence of the Nazi skinhead movement, particularly in Germany, though in comparison to Islamic fundamentalism, the skinheads seem quaint.

Featuring interviews with European politicians, an American rabbi and the American lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the movie sometimes crosses the line in equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. However, it does show how one can come disguised as the other, and succeeds in making the case that the hatred that seemed dead and buried 60 years ago is alive and growing and beginning to present itself once again as a threat to humane civilization.

This fragile Australian offering, about a girl who brings grief to her family by insisting on the reality of two imaginary friends, isn't for cynics. Set in a hardscrabble opal-mining town, the film examines the pressures on the dreamy girl's struggling family in a community that has little use for the impractical.

The father (Vince Colosimo) digs and digs but can't make a strike. Perhaps in his own way he's as much of a daydreamer as his daughter (Sapphire Boyce), a bright loner who spends much of her time with Pobby and Dingan, her invisible pals. The mother (Jacqueline McKenzie) barely supports the family by working as a store clerk, while the girl's older brother (Christian Byers) has his hands full at school, where he pays a price for his sibling's odd behavior.

The girl's family is sick and tired of Pobby and Dingan, but out of kindness and a sense that the child needs this fantasy, they reluctantly indulge her. The result is trouble. One day the girl declares that Pobby and Dingan have disappeared, and the dad, pretending to search for them, accidentally wanders onto the land of a hotheaded fellow miner. This is a serious breach that gets him labeled a "ratter" (claim-jumper), and he and the family are shunned by the town. Moreover, the girl comes down with a mysterious and debilitating ailment.

The story is sentimental -- and peevish types will be all the more put out that the ending is hopeful. Thanks to creative thinking on the brother's part, the girl finds some closure regarding Pobby and Dingan and the family is reconciled to the town. It's tear-jerker material but ends up being quite touching, and it's a good choice for family viewing.

Based on a novella by Ben Rice, the film was directed with a minimum of bells and whistles by Peter Cattaneo of "The Full Monty." The acting is earnest.

Incidentally, the harsh landscape near the real-life opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, where this film is set, has also been the backdrop for several other movies, including "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," "Until the End of the World" and "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."

The new candy-colored indie comedy "Coffee Date" is the "Three's Company" episode ABC censors would never have green-lighted -- a straight guy dating a gay guy as a joke, and thus convincing everyone he's gay no matter how much he denies it. Even the fellow's mother (Sally Kirkland) seems to be channeling Audra Lindley's Mrs. Roper.

Chrissy!?! Writer-director Stewart Wade's plot is indeed sitcom thin -- unabashedly so (it is, after all, padded out from a short film). Todd (Jonathan Bray) is set up on a blind date with Kelly (Wilson Cruz) as a joke by his roommate-brother, Barry (Jonathan Silverman). Todd obviously thought Kelly was a woman, but when they discover they have a mutual interest in movies, they actually proceed with their coffee date.

To play a joke on bro, Todd and Kelly come back to the apartment and pretend they've hit it off. Freaked out, Barry moves out and alerts mom, who flies in to L.A. in a panic.

As when, to prove his manhood to himself, he picks up a woman at a bar, takes her back to his apartment, and can't perform. Is this gay stuff getting to him?

"Coffee Date" is a likable, extremely goofy piece of fluff that, in the words of Kelly, might show up on your "Gaydar."

-- Advisory: Sexual situations, language.

-- G. Allen Johnson

'Train Man' Romantic comedy. Starring Takayuki Yamada, Miki Nakatani. Directed by Shosuke Murakami. In Japanese with English subtitles. (Not rated. 101 minutes. At the Four Star.)

"Train Man" is the translation from the original Japanese title "Densha Otoko," and the hero's name is "Otaku," which is roughly translated as "geek." How the geek becomes a man is essentially the sappy story of this romantic comedy that supposedly is based on a true story, a tale of male maturation that in its home country became an Internet phenomenon, a best-selling manga and, finally, this film, which took in a whopping $35 million last year.

If nothing else, this breezily entertaining fable ups the ante on depicting modern communication. I haven't seen a film that has more characters online or on a cell phone or both.

In fact, chat-room messages are texted right onto the screen, sometimes narrated in voiceover, with such frequency that a real person saying something in his real voice to another real person can be startling.

The main character (Takayuki Yamada), whose chat-room moniker is Train_man (and that's how we know him), begins his path out of geekdom by saving, quite by accident, a pretty woman from a drunk, groping man on the subway. After giving their reports at the police station, they exchange digits and the grateful woman, Hermess (Miki Nakatani), sends him a gift.

With the help of his chat group -- none of whom he's ever met, of course -- he works up the courage to ask her out to dinner, and she accepts.

Happily ever after, right? Not when you're the geekiest guy in the world, a champion fumbler/bumbler who has zero confidence in himself.

Displaying heroic tolerance and patience, Hermess -- who is young, beautiful, unattached and apparently without any hobbies -- coaches Train Man into manhood.

Japanese women and Internet geeks alike love Train Man and his touchy-feely persona, rare for a Japanese male screen hero. And Yamada and Nakatani are indeed likable. Director Shosuke Murakami efficiently packages the material, deftly weaving in the individual stories of Train Man's chat-room buddies and how his success also gives them courage.

It turns out one lonely woman and one lonely man in the chat group are married to each other, neither aware of the other's presence in the ether. When they realize they are both in the chat group and are breathlessly following Train Man's exploits, the marriage is miraculously rebooted.